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Saturday, October 20, 2012

Really expired Postcrossing postcards

I knew Postcrossing postcards that were expired (postcards "expire" after 60 days, so the sender can be allowed to send another, accounting for things lost in the mail, people not registering them, etc) could still be registered if they were received later, but did you know they expire for good after 365 days? I didn't. I received a postcard from China last week, and it couldn't be registered. I tried to have the Postcrossing "robot" find the correct ID (if you haven't used the Postcrossing robot to find missing or incorrect IDs, I highly recommend it), and just received an email letting me know that the postcard ID from China was over 365 days old and thus couldn't be registered. It was postmarked in September 2012, so either the Postcrosser sat on it for a year, or mail from mainland China is even slower than I'd imagined!

Many of you may already know this tidbit, but it was news to me, so I just thought I'd share. Adventures in mailing...

I'm not surprised. Postcards are hard to come by in parts of China and even then, the post office doesn't know what to do with them and wants you to put it in an envelope. In front of them, of course, so they can read what you've written before you send it. I experienced that when I was in Tibet (currently illegally occupied by China).

Sometimes if I have an expired card, I will send another one to a user, just to make sure that they got all of the cards they were supposed to. Maybe the user went back to their expired cards and resent anyone whose card hasn't been received.

I should specify that the sender of this expired postcard wrote NOTHING on the postcard but the Postcrossing ID. No name, no date, nothing... just the ID. I found that a little odd, too, but c'est la vie.

i have accidentally sent blank cards! i had cards ready to mail, and a couple i needed to write on (i do it at work on breaks). at home i write the name & addy and ID# and stamp them. but i do think some people sit on cards for awhile. a co-worker of mine will wait a couple weeks because she doesn't have stamps.

I think Cypher was just posting to get his facebook fans spam on your blog. You might want to delete his post. I just had my first postcard expire, but I still hope it will arrive. You can always check if the person who was supposed to receive it has logged in recently from their profile page. :)